By now, I was shaking my head vigorously.
“You’ve got this all wrong,” I said fiercely. “For one, you have no idea about how hard it is to find a good man these days.”
Her expression made me stop. Uncannily, she was smiling broadly at me.
“Sweetheart,” she began again.
“You’re preaching to the choir.”
Realizing how true this was, I tried another tack. “Right, okay. But the world has gone insane, Mom! People have all kinds of weird ideas. Just last weekend I had to break off this, this thing, because the guy is probably gay!”
Then it all came out, the whole crazy story which I was ashamed to even tell her. She would think I was hanging around with religious nuts, that I had sunk that low in the social scene. But I told her anyway, finishing with my dramatic dismissal of Nick from my life.
“Ouch!” she exclaimed, when I was finished.
“Huh?” I responded, confused.
“Well,” she said, eyebrows raised, “If I had thrown myself at him like you did and he turned me down, that would have stung. Ouch! A bit of a kick in the old ego, no?”
Feeling sheepish, I had to admit she was right.
“And so based on this, you think he’s gay.” It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“That makes no sense,” she said, unimpressed. “He wouldn’t have pursued you. But you do say he’s a practicing Catholic. I wonder where he found a Latin Mass?”
“I dunno,” I said tiredly. “He asked me to go with him a few times, but I said no.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s weird, Mom,” I answered her with irritation.
“Is anything else about him weird?”
I thought about it. He had a good job. A little nerdy, but not too much. He dressed well, but conservatively. He drank, but not excessively. He was kind, and thoughtful, too.
“He reads a lot of books,” I volunteered doubtfully.
“Oh my God, how weird is that?” she responded, looking at me keenly.
I had to admit, my excuses sounded stupid.
“So basically what you are telling me is that you tried to trap him by having sex with you, and he turned you down. Then, you got mad and threw him out.”
“What?” I cried, incensed. “Whaddyou mean ‘trap him’?”
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